Some of this is terrible. Some of this is beautiful. For more information, please visit www.imfinethankyou.net

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I was sitting out here on the steps, drinking coffee and waiting for the dogs to get their fresh air, etc.

Trying to figure out where I could put peas in this year. The garden is going to take a ridiculous amount of strategizing this year.Fortunately, I have a few chunks of time and good weather to consider all I have to work with.

I considered the dead peach tree in the corner. A gift from spouse, slow beetles, deep fungus, dropped it leaves last July. I put my wedding band on a branch, last December. There’s a post re: that action somewhere back in the wintertime.

A person I know and respect has a dead shrub painted faded blue in her yard. “It died and I just wanted a blue tree.” This is how she explained it to me.

Word.

There is something intensely powerful in the reclamation of death via the power blue. I hope that more people will paint their dead trees blue.

Send me a picture of a dead tree painted blue , a story. I will post it. Really.

faithrhyne@consolationprizes.org

All these little experiments are small hello to the wistful among the weary.

I’m going to wait to paint it further. Give the children small brushes. I might be a distracted mother sometimes. But at least I am trying to keep a good record.

I don’t imagine that my parents have read the post re: their internet phobia and slowness. The amazing thing about my parents is that they are the ones who taught me that looking closely at a tree is not a waste of time at all. That small flowers are worthy of exclamation.

Most people don’t notice too much. And so there is little distraction from the liminal mechanics of getting through the day. Being caught of guard is so important…our efficiency is deadly.

Maybe people would notice a dead tree painted blue. It makes me happy to think of kids in the backseats of busily driving cars seeing a dead tree painted blue in some random yard. Wondering why it was there.